He’d wished his mother wasn’t always quarrelling with his father, yelling at him, storming out, making scenes wherever she was, in front of everyone, even in front of complete strangers, not giving a damn that people were looking, not caring about her son’s mortification, her husband’s cringing embarrassment. However badly his mother behaved, his father seemed to be in thrall to her, letting her endlessly get away with her outbursts.
As a boy he’d been unable to understand why—but as he became a teenager, and then a man, he’d come to understand the power his mother had over his father. The power of her blatant sexuality that his hapless father had never been able to resist.
Rejection of his father’s endless surrender to his wife’s sensual allure had brought Luca to a steely resolve for himself. His own marriage would be nothing like his tormented parents’. Never would he be in sexual thrall to a woman as his father had been, and nor would his wife be like his demanding, self-absorbed mother, who’d cared nothing for her hapless husband and her neglected son.
No, the woman he would fall in love with—his ideal since his teenage years—would be the very opposite. Quiet and gentle, sweet-natured and loving, never raising her voice to anyone. And all he’d want would be her happiness, as he bestowed upon her his devotion and his wealth.
Wealth he had made for himself, in the cut-throat world of high finance. Wealth of which he was now in continued pursuit—and he needled his glance through the guests, looking for fellow financier Charles van Huren, whom he had arranged to meet here.
Charles’s business schedule was as non-stop as his own, and as Luca was flying back to Italy the next morning it meant that tonight, albeit at Charles’s wife’s birthday party, was the only opportunity they would have to discuss the joint business investment they were contemplating.
He levered himself away from the wall, intent on finding his host in the crowd. He gave a cursory glance into the room opening off to his left, from which throbbing dance music was emanating. As he did so, someone caught his eye.
A woman...dancing on her own.
Ariana could feel the slow, heavy beat of the music, the old, familiar number echoing in her pulse as she moved to it, murmuring the well-worn lyrics of the track with a nostalgic half-smile playing on her lips.
Without conscious volition she moved on to the floor, started to dance, not caring that she had no one to dance with, wanting only to feel the slug of the music, to give herself to it, her feet moving indolently, arms twining, serpentine, winding in and out of the intoxicating melody.
Feeling the luxuriant tresses of her hair loosened from their customary businesslike confines and moving across her shoulders like a silky cloud, she dipped her head, hair swaying, heartrate synching with the heavy music. Losing all sense of time, she was becoming one with the music, primitive, primeval, caught in its low, seductive beat.
Then the music ended, and lights flared in a blaze. She looked up, throwing her head back, catching her breath as her eyes focussed.
Straight into the watching gaze of a man standing at the edge of the dance floor, looking straight at her.
Luca stood immobile, his gaze fixed. Why the hell had he stopped as he had?
It was a pointless question to ask himself. He knew exactly why.
The woman was tall, her height accentuated by heels that threw her lush body, tightly sheathed in a dark red dress, into lusher curves yet, lengthening her slender legs. Her long, loose hair cascaded down her back, framing a face as breathtaking as her body, with huge dark eyes and a curving, wanton mouth...
The woman who had just stopped dancing would have drawn the eye of a saint.
And he was no saint...
He felt his body quicken with incipient arousal. He crushed it down. He wasn’t in the market for an encounter of any kind. Not any longer. And certainly not with a woman like the one he was staring at.
Before, when he’d wanted...needed...a woman he’d picked carefully. Very carefully. Someone to dine with, talk with—politics, business, finance—and take to bed. High-flying women, nearly always working in the same field as himself, with whom it was therefore easy to converse. Sleek, svelte women who wore an evening dress as if it were a business suit, with short, smooth, styled hair and discreet, immaculate make-up. Beautiful women, obviously, but women who controlled their lives as rigorously as he did his own.
The woman he’d just been watching had not been controlling her life at all. She’d let the music control it. She had melded her body with it. Arms moving sinuously, body swaying, head bowed, lost to the world...
A world she had suddenly returned to as the music had stopped and her body had stilled.
For a second her eyes, dark and huge and smoky, lifted to his, looked right at him. Then, abruptly, she was turning away, raising her hands as she did so to lift the heavy tresses of lush dark hair as if to cool her neck. It was a very natural gesture, and a sensual one...
Luca’s gaze narrowed slightly. The woman’s movement had lifted her breasts, which now strained against the tight material of her dress, emphasising her generous cleavage. Again, against his will, he felt his body react...
Anger stabbed. This was way out of order.
Forcing his muscles to obey him, he moved sharply away. Across the main function room he saw Charles van Huren, finally finished with his duties as host, and made eye contact. Receiving an acknowledging nod in return, he headed forward, and moments later both men had disappeared into a deserted room and settled down to their business discussion, in brisk, time-efficient tones.
All thoughts of the lushly curved brunette with her smoky eyes, sensuous dancing and mane of wild hair, were forcibly banished.
Ariana let her hair fall again, heavy on her shoulders, and as if she were following through with the gesture twisted her head towards the entrance to the dance floor. She exhaled, relief filling her. He was gone.
That moment, brief as a casual glance, had been anything but casual. Her gaze had collided with his like a physical clash, and she knew with a sudden pulse in her veins that had nothing to do with the throbbing music that it had been fastened on her. Watching her dance.
Watchingher.